How to Start a Food Stockpile from Nothing

With rising food prices, you might be wondering if you’ll be able to afford feeding your family the same quality of food you would prefer to.

Or you might be looking at the shelves at the grocery store and wondering what would happen if you couldn’t just drive to the grocery store to refill your fridge and pantry.

If you have been feeling the need to be a little more prepared in the food department, this post is for you! I will show you how to start a food stockpile completely from scratch.

If you don’t have much money or storage space, that’s okay! Even if you live in a tiny one-bedroom apartment, you can still build up a supply of food to help ease both your nerves and your wallet.

Start small

When you’re just starting a stockpile, it’s best to start small and build up as you go.

If you’re on a budget, you probably won’t be able to buy 25 pounds or 50 pounds of flour or sugar at first. Instead, the next time you get groceries, just add an extra bag to your cart.

Adding even one extra bag, canned, etc. to your grocery card each week will help you build up a store of food. Then you won’t have to worry if something is or isn’t in stock at the store.

Even if you’re on a really tight budget, buying some thing like a small bag of flour or sugar or a couple cans of corn or green beans will probably only cost you an extra dollar or two. Plus, the peace of mind that you will have from having a fully stocked pantry at home will be well worth it.

Try before you buy (in bulk)

If you have never cooked dried beans or ground your own flour before, don’t start your stockpile by buying 10 pounds of dry pinto beans or 50 pounds of wheat berries.

Instead, buy a smaller package and try them out. Once you know that your family likes them and you know how to prepare them, then you can add a larger amount to your stockpile.

Buy Only What You’ll Use

Kind of like with my point about buying a little of an item before you buy in bulk, don’t buy 50 pounds of something if hardly anyone in your family likes it.

Just because someone on Instagram has a pantry full of different grains, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to include all of those in your pantry.

Instead, maybe you will need just some wheat and some oatmeal. Just because you aren’t stocking a large variety doesn’t mean you can’t build a stockpile that can keep your family well fed even when you can’t go to the grocery store.

Similarly, if you have dietary restrictions, It doesn’t make a ton of sense to stock some thing that someone can eat.

What should I stockpile?

Not sure what to include in your stockpile? Pay attention to what you buy in smaller quantities currently.

What are you cooking with that is shelf stable? If you have an idea of how much of each item you use on a weekly or biweekly basis, you can figure out how much you would need for a 3-month, 6-month, or even a whole year‘s supply. You most likely won’t be starting with that much of a supply all at once, but it can be a goal to aim for in the long term.

Keep a master list

Once you have a list based on what you are already cooking, type them into a list of items to add to your stockpile. When something on your list is on sale for a good price, pick up a few extras to add to your food storage.

Some examples of items to stock up on include:

Food items to stock up on

• Grains (or flour if you don’t have a grain mill)
• Pasta
• Canned Fruits
• Canned Vegetables
• Cann Soup
• Spices
• Salt and Pepper
• Chocolate Chips
• Sugar
• Baking Powder
• Baking Soda
• Yeast

Non-food items to stock up on

• Laundry Detergent
• Dish Detergent
• Ziplock bags
• Shampoo and Conditioner
• Soap
• Toothbrushes
• Toothpaste
• Floss

I’m sure there are lots more things you can add to your stockpile, but those are some of the things I have included in mine that I can think of off the top of my head.

Buy on sale

If you’re trying to build up a stockpile on a budget, one of my best tips (when you can’t buy an item in bulk or wouldn’t use enough to justify it) is the shop the sales.

If you have a master list of things you would like to add to your stockpile, you will be able to reference your list and see if any of those items are on sale for a good price.

A price book can also be a helpful tool to keep track of an item’s normal price and to be able to see if it’s a good sale.

Use What You Buy

There is really no point in building of a stockpile of food if it won’t get eaten. If you’ve filled your stockpile with ingredients to cook with it on a regular basis, this part shouldn’t be hard.

When you add a recipe to your meal plan, instead of adding an ingredient for it to your grocery list, you would simply walk to your food storage and grab what you need. It’s like having a grocery store in your own home!

If you learn how to cook with a new ingredient (lentils, for instance) and you want to stock them in bulk, just add them to your master list for future reference. That way, your list will always be up-to-date for your current cooking style. Similarly, if you no longer cook with an ingredient, there is no use in buying more of it.

Cooking from scratch can definitely help you cook through your food stockpile so you will be able to rotate through the food before it expires. However, sometimes you just need to create an entire week or two of meals that focus heavily on using the dry goods in your food storage.

Do a pantry challenge

Another example of this is doing a “pantry challenge“ where you challenge yourself to either buy no groceries (or only the bare minimum) and instead cook from the things you have in your stockpile.

Depending on how long you go without buying groceries and how big your food storage is, you might have to get pretty creative. Even just a week of intentionally using items from storage can help use them up.

If you have a garden and preserve what you grow, you can do a pantry challenge like this in the winter/early spring to get your shelves and freezers ready for the coming year‘s harvest.

Be Creative with Storage Space

But I don’t have any space!

Never fear, there are plenty of ways to get creative with food storage. It doesn’t just have to be open shelves built solely for food storage or a giant walk-in pantry (though, those things are amazing).

If you need some ideas of where to store your food stockpile, here are some to get you started:

• Totes (make sure they’re labeled)
• Under-bed storage
• Closets
• On top of kitchen cabinets

Stockpile in the Freezer

While it is pretty easy to stockpile canned fruits and veggies, pastas, and non-perishables on shelves, a freezer can help you move to the “next level“ by allowing you to store more perishable items.

This will be the easiest way for you to stock up on things such as meats at first. Unless you have a pressure canner or pre-canned meat, you will need a freezer to store meat.

The easiest and most cost effective way to stock up on meat is to buy it in bulk. You can do this for meats such as beef, pork, and lamb.

Yes, you can stockpile dairy products

Freezers also allow you to stock up on dairy products such as milk, cheese, butter, and more!

These are all pretty easy to freeze, but there are plenty of tutorials out there if you want to learn the best way to freeze foods for the best texture after thawing.

Freezers also allow you to preserve produce from your garden or the farmers market so you can enjoy it all year long!

For more tips on how to build a freezer stock pile and how it can help you avoid the grocery store, check out post on reducing your dependence on the grocery store using a deep freezer.

What are your go to foods for building up your stockpile?